The story that leads to Junip’s 2010 release is one of patience and perfectionism, frustration and persistence, sheer bloody-mindedness, inspiration and success. The place to which it takes you, however, is one of pastoral contemplation, autumnal grace and inscrutable, haunting serenity. A cosmopolitan three piece from Gothenburg, Sweden – featuring Tobias Winterkorn (keyboards), Elias Araya (drums) and José González (vocals & guitar), the latter of whom you’ll be familiar with from his solo work – Junip have existed since 1999, maybe even 1998. It’s so long, frankly, that none of them are quite sure. FIELDS, however, is the album that they’ve been itching to make ever since.

González and Araya have been playing together since they were 14. Their love of hardcore led them to form Renascence, (later called Sweet Little Sinister), and they first encountered Winterkorn at shows in Gothenburg in the mid ‘90s. “We talked about music that wasn’t hardcore music,” Winterkorn recalls. “I think we were all fed up and talked about doing something new.” “Our feeling was that we could do something more interesting with a setting that was more typical of the ‘60s and 70s’,” “By then in Sweden,” González relates, “it felt like everyone else was into Americana and country with steel stringed guitars,” he continues. “We had nylon strings and a Moog.”

They started rehearsing at Araya’s mother’s house, and though González initially brought in half-finished songs, “I noticed pretty early that it sounded better if we improvised together first and I then came up with a melody and lyrics.” “I remember,” Araya reminisces, “that the lack of a full drumkit played a big part in the beginning of how the songs, and especially the drum patterns, were formed."